Harley N. Nichols

The Distinguished Service Cross is presented to Harley N. Nichols, Sergeant, U.S. Army, for extraordinary heroism in action near Charpentry, France, October 4, 1918. While making an attack with four other tanks Sergeant Nichols’s tank was struck by an enemy shell, which put it out of action. He continued to fire on a machine-gun nest until it was apparently destroyed, when he with his driver dismounted, and started to the nest, but they were fired on by the German gunners. They killed the two gunners and disabled the guns, and then drove the gunners from another gun. Under the protection of another tank they started to our own lines 1,500 meters away. On the way back two Germans with antitank rifles were encountered, the rifles captured. Sergeant Nichols and his driver were under heavy machine-gun and artillery fire throughout the operation.